Brad Paisley: We need to do better by our veterans

NASHVILLE – Brad Paisley hopes to send out a strong message with the title track of his new album “Love and War. He said his single, featuring John Fogerty, is a “bit of a protest song” against the mistreatment of our veterans.

Fox News caught up with Paisley as he presented his 16-song, 62-minute movie to an audience at the CMA Festival.

Fox News: The title track “Love and War” what you wanted to say and why?Brad Paisley: Once I came up with the idea for that song, I had it in mind to do that with John Fogerty who was the voice of, musically, the Vietnam Era in some ways. We think back to what we got wrong during Vietnam, which was that if you weren’t for the war somehow you weren’t for the troops either. And now we’re getting it right, that we understand that whether or not we agree or with any sort of conflict, that we honor these troops but we’re not doing it in the greater scheme of things when it comes to healthcare and the VA and the things that we need to improve. So to me, I thought there’s some sort of song here that’s a bit of a protest song and it’s protesting the mistreatment of these guys that are heroes that are the reason that we have all of these things that we have in this country.

Fox News: What feedback do you get from service members who have heard the song?Paisley: The main comment I get I think from service people is “thank you.” Which is exactly what you want to hear. I mean, let’s do better on this subject. I’d love for this song to be obsolete eventually. Unfortunately I think we’re a ways away from that.

Fox News: What do you hope people take away from your album?Paisley: There are several things. When you think about the ways you can make things three dimensional versus two dimensional by doing this. The song “The Devil is Alive and Well” can mean a lot of things. It can be the sort of [rage] on social media, it could be terrorism, it could be looking at the injustices in society. But when you see the video that we did, we focused on a church that was burned down in Nashville that’s under an arson investigation — it’s a Hispanic church. So we went and shot on the steps of this… there’s nothing sadder than a church that’s left in ruin and ashes. So maybe somebody sees this and in Nashville this leads us to rebuild that.